Predictability and hierarchy in Drosophila behavior. Author Gordon Berman, William Bialek, Joshua Shaevitz Publication Year 2016 Type Journal Article Abstract Even the simplest of animals exhibit behavioral sequences with complex temporal dynamics. Prominent among the proposed organizing principles for these dynamics has been the idea of a hierarchy, wherein the movements an animal makes can be understood as a set of nested subclusters. Although this type of organization holds potential advantages in terms of motion control and neural circuitry, measurements demonstrating this for an animal's entire behavioral repertoire have been limited in scope and temporal complexity. Here, we use a recently developed unsupervised technique to discover and track the occurrence of all stereotyped behaviors performed by fruit flies moving in a shallow arena. Calculating the optimally predictive representation of the fly's future behaviors, we show that fly behavior exhibits multiple time scales and is organized into a hierarchical structure that is indicative of its underlying behavioral programs and its changing internal states. Journal Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Volume 113 Issue 42 Pages 11943-11948 Date Published 10/2016 ISSN Number 1091-6490 DOI 10.1073/pnas.1607601113 Alternate Journal Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. PMCID PMC5081631 PMID 27702892 PubMedPubMed CentralGoogle ScholarBibTeXEndNote X3 XML